Ep. 57 | David Wood, Odessa College

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley sits down with David Wood, head baseball coach at Odessa College, whose Wranglers had just taken the Western Junior College Athletic Conference regular season title and were days from opening the postseason at home. Wood grew up on Long Island, started college at Stony Brook, and reset his career with a move to Texas: a walk-on tryout at Temple College, a finish at Texas State, three years in the Kansas City Royals organization, and coaching stops from Division II to NAIA to junior college.

Most of this conversation is about the part of a program that never shows up in a box score. Wood gives up field time every week for classroom sessions, recruits intangibles over tools, and tells his players he will be the first to admit when a loss is on him.

The highlights:

• What actually drew him to Odessa, and why the drive is the hardest part of his recruiting pitch
• Weekly classroom sessions built around audiobooks and some uncomfortable honesty
• The twin thieves of fear of failure and fear of judgment, plus the third he adds for young players
• Why he coaches a 19-year-old a lot like he coaches his own 12-year-old
• The freshman who hit around .120 in the fall and changed a season with one swing
• How he screens for intangibles by calling coaches who played against a recruit
• Events, responses, and a request for parents who yell during games

From Long Island to the Permian Basin

Wood was not ready for the academic side of Stony Brook, and after the fall of 2004 he needed a change. His father had moved to Texas to build homes, so Wood followed, over the objections of a college coach who did not believe he was really leaving New York. At Temple College the staff assumed his request for a tryout was a prank call; he worked out and left with a spot. He finished at Texas State, spent three years in the Royals organization, and was done playing in 2009 knowing he wanted to coach. His old head coach had nothing open but offered to make any call necessary, which led to ten years on staff at St. Edward's University.

Why Odessa College

Wood's first head coaching job was at St. Thomas in Houston. When his wife became pregnant with their third child the math stopped working, and San Jacinto College gave the family more room to breathe. That single year turned into an interim head coaching run after the head coach had to resign, and the team pushed the eventual national champion to a third game in a super regional. He did not get the permanent job, which he is at peace with, and two weeks after hearing Odessa was looking, he accepted.

What sold him was the community. Odessa is bigger than people assume but has a small-town feel, with weekly media availability, a college president who cares about athletics, and an athletic director he says will do anything for the program. The recruiting hurdle is geography: once a recruit gets through the long stretch of nothing on the drive in, there is a real place on the other side, with an airport parents can fly into cheaply for a weekend.

An Hour and a Half in the Classroom Every Week

The change Wood credits most for this season is new. Once a week, for 90 minutes behind closed doors, the team works through audiobooks together. They have gone through three Jon Gordon books, including The Energy Bus and The Hard Hat, and were finishing The Twin Thieves the morning this episode was recorded. The thieves in question are fear of failure and fear of judgment.

"I am willing to sacrifice some on-field time to really dig into the mental side of the game."

The idea came out of his assistants and a conversation at the coaches convention, where Gordon was speaking. Bringing a speaker in was out of reach on a junior college budget, so Wood worked through the books himself. Some sessions have been hard ones, where the team addresses the things that sink a ship rather than keep it afloat. Ten years ago, he says, he would have called the idea nuts and gone to the cage instead.

Coaching This Generation

Wood is also coaching his own 12-year-old, and he sees almost no difference between that and coaching an 18- or 19-year-old. Yell at a 12-year-old and he folds. Yell at a 19-year-old and he might fold too, unless he trusts you and understands why you are doing what you are doing.

"Coddled is not the right word, because we do not coddle our kids. We love our guys."

The standard still gets enforced. If a player comes out of a game for missing it, Wood brings him up, puts an arm around him, and makes him answer why; if the player is too angry to hear it, they wait until both are level-headed. What wears Wood out is the expectation level in youth and select baseball, where every weekend gets played like a championship, instead of teaching kids to love showing up and win through development.

The Freshman Who Kept Showing Up

The player Wood points to is a freshman outfielder from Puerto Rico, Alejandro Rivera, who arrived raw and without much English and hit around .120 in the fall. He was not a starter in the spring, and he never wavered. In the opening weekend of conference play, with Odessa trailing a top-five Midland team by four in the seventh, Rivera laced a double down the right field line and started a rally. Odessa tied it and lost in extra innings, but the at-bat jump-started the season and the player, and he has not come out of the lineup since.

A month later he rolled a ball to second and did not run it out, with his family in from Puerto Rico to surprise him. Wood pulled him anyway, asked if he understood why, and got a yes and an apology. He will not waver regardless of who it hurts in the moment, because the player who let his teammates down should be the one who feels it.

Recruiting for Intangibles

Every coach wants the recruit who checks the physical boxes, and Wood is candid that his roster is not that; teams in his league are more physical. What he looks for is hard to see on a showcase field, so he goes around it. Rather than rely on select or high school coaches who may tell him what he wants to hear, he calls coaches whose teams played against the player. They have nothing to protect, and they will tell him about the kid who would not run down the line or who treated teammates poorly.

"I don't want to waste time trying to get one guy to buy in when 50 guys are already bought in."

One lazy effort does not cross a player off; Wood wants to see the response in the next at-bat. He can teach a player to run hard, because the team base runs every day. What he will not spend the group's time on is a player who shows up his teammates and takes no ownership of his own execution. This roster has one Division I bounce-back on it, unusual at a winning junior college. He takes those players when the fit or the innings were the real problem, but he would rather find the high school kid who got overlooked.

Love, Serve, Care

Wood's shorthand comes out of another Jon Gordon book: love, serve, care. In practice it looks small. If one player hits in the cage, three or four are in there picking up baseballs. The group he inherited had a harder edge, where the older players told the younger ones how it was going to be, and the sophomores who lived through that did not want to be remembered that way.

Junior college can be transactional, because every player's honest goal is the next four-year program, so Wood aims that motive at the team: make each other look good and all of you get seen. He holds himself to the same standard. After a player was picked off third in a big moment against El Paso in a game they lost in extra innings, Wood said nothing to him, then told the team the loss was entirely on him and asked them to pick him up. They won the next one. Parents get weekly newsletters, including the books the team is reading.

Unwritten Rules, and Music in the Ballpark

Wood was not a hitter who admired his home runs, and the one he did watch at Corpus Christi earned him a promise from his on-deck hitter that he would answer for it if the next pitch came in. He also had a teammate's back once when an opposing hitter showed up his pitcher, though he is clear he would never ask a player of his to hit somebody on purpose. His walkout songs ranged from Queen to Ja Rule, and the pregame mix at Odessa runs from country to EDM to salsa, with one rule: keep it clean, because people from town wander in to watch.

Into the Postseason

Odessa spends its preparation time on itself rather than on opponent scouting reports, because Wood does not want to psych his players out. What the group does well is throw strikes, and he puts their season walk total at 177, a number that matters in the West, where free bases turn into crooked innings.

"I would rather you give up solo bombs all game long instead of two walks and a three-run bomb."

He had no interest in changing the approach for the playoffs; it is still the same game they played all spring. Getting out of Texas is its own accomplishment, with only two teams advancing out of the state.

Advice for the Next Generation

Asked what would elevate the game, Wood starts at the youth level.

For parents and youth coaches: Let them fail, then teach them how to come back from it.

"We want so badly for them to be successful that we are hindering their growth."

If a kid only ever hears what he did wrong, Wood says, he will never learn what being good feels like. The three thieves he wants young players free of are fear of failure, fear of judgment, and fear of comparison, and he has no patience for 11U national rankings no college coach will ever ask about. His team frames it as events and responses: the event is usually out of your hands, but the response produces the outcome. His most direct request is to stop yelling at your kid during games. Talk afterward, but let them play, because the game is hard enough without 15 voices from the stands.

For high school players: Go play the game you love and learn how to overcome. His prediction for his own bracket was that the loosest, most carefree team would win it, not the one worried about who was watching.

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 1:25 — From Long Island to Texas
• 2:51 — A tryout at Temple College, then Texas State and the Royals
• 5:06 — St. Thomas, San Jacinto, and an interim head coaching run
• 6:28 — What drew him to Odessa College
• 9:50 — Bringing energy, and an open office door
• 12:07 — Weekly classroom sessions and audiobooks
• 14:04 — Jon Gordon at the coaches convention, and the books that stuck
• 17:42 — Coaching a 12-year-old and a 19-year-old
• 20:31 — The freshman from Puerto Rico who never wavered
• 22:41 — Pulled from the game with his family in the stands
• 25:32 — Recruiting intangibles: ask the coaches who played against him
• 27:41 — What wears him out: showing up a teammate
• 32:48 — Love, serve, care
• 35:02 — One Division I bounce-back, and recruiting the overlooked
• 39:53 — Owning a loss in front of the team
• 41:52 — Etiquette, hit batters, and a story from Texas State
• 45:41 — Postseason at home, and throwing strikes
• 48:52 — Let kids fail, then teach them to overcome
• 53:39 — Walkout songs and a mixed playlist
• 56:08 — Thanking the coaches who shaped him

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David Wood is the head baseball coach at Odessa College in Odessa, Texas. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.